Researchers from Helsinki, Finland have called on world leaders to reduce agricultural waste and food losses, positing that achievable action in this area could lift a billion people out of food insecurity.

Although concerns over a growing world population and continued food insecurity in several global regions have sparked calls to ramp up production from the industrial farm lobby, agriculturalists and anti-poverty campaigners have been calling for efforts to reduce waste and increase access to food for the world’s poorest for well over ten years, having identified that the problem of hunger is largely due to inequality and not a global lack of food.

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In 2000, eminent Natural Sciences Professor Vaclav Smil concluded that, by increasing efficiency, environmental protection, improving access to food, and crucially reducing waste, global food security is an achievable prospect. He said, “A combination of well-proven economic and technical fixes, environmental protection measures, and dietary adjustments can extract enough additional food from the world’s agroecosystems… without a further weakening of [its] environmental foundations.” Smil stressed that addressing losses and waste would be an integral part of this combination.  

On Wednesday (10th October), researchers at Aalto University claimed to have produced the world’s first accurate estimate of just how many people could be fed by reducing food losses. The researchers suggested that the world's current population of seven billion people could be fed easily on current production, and that an additional one billion people could be fed if inequalities and waste were addressed without increasing production.

They summarised their findings, “More efficient use of the food production chain and a decrease in the amount of food losses will dramatically help maintain the planet's natural resources and improve people's lives.”

Author: Non-renewable resources must be used more wisely

Matti Kummu, one of the authors behind the study, outlined some of the barriers to achieving food security, “There isn't enough clean water everywhere on Earth. Significantly more agricultural land cannot be cleared as well as certain raw material minerals for fertilisers are running low. At the same time, a quarter of the amount of calories in produced food is lost or wasted at different stages of food production chain, which results in unnecessary resources loss.”

Kummu said his work is amongst the first to evaluate the impact of food losses and their relationship to resources on a global scale. He said that, for each of the Earth’s inhabitants, 27 m3 of clean water, 0.031 hectares of agricultural land and 4.3 kilos of fertiliser is wasted annually in food losses.

The post-doctoral researcher added that, worldwide, agriculture uses over 90 percent of the fresh water consumed by humans and most of the raw materials used in fertilisers. More efficient food production and the reduction of food losses would ease the burden on the environment as well as improving food security, he added.

The extensive study looked at global food losses in terms of kilocalories per person, which Kummu also claims is a global first. The researchers revealed that one quarter of the food produced every day is lost within the food supply chain; previous estimates have put the figure as high as one third or even half of all food lost from field to fork. Losses are especially severe in developing countries which lack adequate storage facilities.

Waste identified in the food chain accounts for 24 percent of total freshwater use, 23 percent of total global cropland area, and 23 percent of total global fertiliser use, according to the Aalto researchers.  Interestingly, the researchers revealed inefficiencies differ between different global regions; losses were found to be most significant in North Africa & West-Central Asia (in terms of freshwater and cropland) and North America & Oceania (in terms of fertilisers).

The smallest per capita use of resources for food losses were found to be in Sub-Saharan Africa (freshwater and fertilisers) and in Industrialised Asia (cropland). Relative to total food production, the smallest food supply and resource losses occur in South & Southeast Asia.

Dr Kummu, whose study can be accessed here, explained the significance of the research, “Thus, by halving the food losses, we could feed 8 billion people with the currently used resources.”

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